New Language Features in Java7 - Project Coin

This blog series will cover some of the new language features available in Java7. To start with, lets cover some changes that are available under the pseudonym "Project Coin" or in the Community parlance JSR334.The main theme of "Project Coin" according to its Spec Lead Joseph Darcy is "making things programmers do every day easier".

Since Project Coin itself contains a number of small language changes, lets look at them one at a time. The first language change we will be discussing is called "Strings in Switch".

Strings in Switch

To understand this language feature, lets look at a simple use-case - a method that checks the input and prints the matching color.

Prior to Java7, there were generally 2 options available to achieve this. Lets look at them one by one:

Option 1:

This the most obvious and simple way of using multiple if-else blocks to check and validate the input.